With ‘weeks’ of wait for Polestar 3 launch, its CEO wants company to become ‘self-sufficient’

Thomas Ingenlath is having a bit an excessive amount of fun in his Polestar 3, silently pulling away from stop signs and negotiating increasingly tighter bends, smiling like a person much younger than his 59 years.

“You can really push this car,” the Polestar CEO says as he cruises the roads alongside fellow enthusiasts near Spanish Bay north of Pebble Beach during Monterey Car Week, praising the SUV’s ability to be each comfortable and smooth while still delivering the engaging handling that buyers of the brand’s first two cars, the hybrid Polestar 1 and the electrical Polestar 2, have come to know and love.

In his neutral suit, he almost blends into the pale interior of the full-size SUV, the one contrast a yellow seat belt across his chest. It’s an aesthetic that matches the character of the automotive itself: premium, minimalist looks with the sharp performance of a Polestar machine.

Safe Ground for Electric Vehicles, Shifting Political Sands

But the Polestar 3 marks a brand new path for the brand on the streets of the U.S. Although the automotive that Ingenlath drives through Monterey traffic was inbuilt China, the primary Polestar 3 SUVs assembled in America are only starting to roll off the factory lines at Polestar’s plant in Ridgeville, South Carolina.

The same factory has long made cars for Volvo, which is owned by China’s Geely Holding. Polestar — a Volvo spinoff based in Sweden that can be owned by Geely — now shares the space because it forges ahead within the United States amid headwinds from recent tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.

While the Polestar 2 is manufactured in Gothenburg, all Polestar 3 SUVs destined for the U.S. market will probably be inbuilt South Carolina.

“The production of the Polestar 3 is taking place on what I call safe ground,” says Ingenlath.

Safe ground, perhaps, but actually shifting sands. Ingenlath believes that demand for electric vehicles within the U.S. market is evolving and would require patience: “How quickly will it evolve? We’ll have to see,” he says. “But it’s certainly not something that worries me in terms of our company’s purpose.”

Ingenlath says he’d obviously like to see adoption rates even higher here, but he’d be even happier if policies within the United States were “a little more consistent.”

He’s keeping a detailed eye on the election. “All this hype around it is just worrying,” he muses. (*3*)

It takes greater than five years to design and develop cars just like the Polestar 3. Moves just like the latest tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles imported into the U.S.—which got here practically overnight—pose an actual threat.

Electric Vehicle Financing

That’s only one of the challenges Polestar has faced recently. In early 2024, Volvo divested a significant slice of its stake within the company. Ingenlath downplays the move, noting that Volvo still owns about 18% of the company. “It’s not insignificant,” he says. “If you own 20% of a company, you’re very interested in how it’s doing.”

Polestar has turned to banks for a $1 billion loan to keep things heading in the right direction. Ingenlath says the change in ownership hasn’t caused him to run the company in a different way. Still, he says, it’s all the time good to give attention to the fundamentals.

“What’s important now is to show them the ability to execute,” Ingenlath notes of his commitments to banks, “that we have these great cars coming out, that we have markets that are successfully introducing cars, delivering them and selling them.”

Ingenlath wouldn’t say whether Polestar will need additional funding to pull off this plan, but says the main focus now’s on making Polestar “self-sufficient.”

SUV bet

The Polestar 3 is an integral part of that plan. Although the Polestar 2 is a nice-driving, clean-looking sedan, it plays right into a market dominated by SUVs within the U.S. Ingenlath calls it “a fairly compact European sedan that won’t meet family needs.”

The Polestar 3 should fare higher on this regard, a minimum of for families who can afford its $73,400 starting price. The vehicle is significantly larger, more upright, and more spacious than the Polestar 2, yet it guarantees a taste of the identical driving character.

Importantly, the sales increase is essential to prepare the bottom for further Polestar launches.

The multi-threaded nomenclature continues with the Polestar 4, a smaller SUV that gives some of the Polestar 4’s volume (and all of the rear visibility) in exchange for a radically sloping roofline and a cheaper price tag starting at $54,900.

Then comes the Polestar 5, a sporty, stylish sedan that matches the brand’s give attention to design, a trait that Ingenlath says is more necessary to the company than federal subsidies for electric vehicles. “We need to get people behind the wheel of a Polestar by buying our products because they’re just so damn desirable and they want them,” he says.

The Polestar 4 is scheduled to launch at the tip of this yr, and the Polestar 5 in 2025. This is an ambitious plan considering that the Polestar 2 has been the one model offered by the company on the American market for almost 4 years.

That wasn’t the plan. The Polestar 3 has suffered significant delays due to software issues which have also sidelined its corporate sibling, the Volvo EX90. Still, Ingenlath says sharing technology with Volvo is a key part of Polestar’s ability to iterate quickly.

“Why would we develop ADAS systems ourselves?” he asks. “Of course, Volvo provides a technology base here that is perfect for this premium vehicle that we want to build.”

This technology exchange will proceed despite Volvo’s partial withdrawal. Volvo just isn’t its only partner. Polestar was an early adopter of Android Automotive, effectively handing the complete automotive interface over to Google.

“It’s one of the most enjoyable, smoothest success stories of actually implementing technology,” he says, a call that was initially met with skepticism. “People were like, ‘Oh, what are you doing? Are you really going to bed with Google? Blah, blah, blah.’ There were so many raised eyebrows about it. Jesus, our customers love it. It’s such a step forward in terms of ease of use.”

The real step forward for Polestar will probably be the long-awaited launch of the Polestar 3, which Ingenlath says will occur inside “weeks.”